The St James Community Improvement Committee (St James CIC) yesterday announced via a press release that it has decided to cancel the We Beat Festival which is due to come off next month, due to a “lack of financial support from both levels of Government.” The organisers said there was no support from central and municipal government and the private sector, “including those from the St James area, most of whom benefitted directly from the event.”
President of the St James CIC Earl Crosby said the group had met with former adviser to the Minister of Arts and Multiculturalism, Roy Augustus and was told that he would advise support for the event. Crosby said he later met the minister at a symposium hosted by the National Carnival Commission and raised the issue. He said he was told by the minister that the ministry could not support everyone.
When contacted, Minister Lincoln Douglas said it was unfortunate that the event had to be cancelled, and he wished the ministry could have afforded to help. He added that “the ministry has a set of strategic goals and objectives for culture” and thus needed to direct its resources accordingly.
Asked if he was aware that We Beat was started on the request of the Tourism Industrial Development Corporation (Tidco), now Tourism Development Company (TDC) and so was a Government-initiated event, Douglas said, “then you are speaking to the wrong minister. Talk to the Tourism minister.” The Culture Ministry is the ministry which has been providing some level of support to the event over the years.
Port-of-Spain Mayor Louis Lee Sing, who spoke with the Sunday Guardian from St Lucia, was also unsympathetic to the We Beat cause. “Well, poor Earl. I do not care if We Beat happens or if it does not happen, it is doing nothing to help the city,” Lee Sing said.
“Why should they be begging for funds. They have sole responsibility for the St James Amphitheatre, they have the keys. And this is the same group who led the St James businessmen to protest when I made attempts to put the vendors in the St James Amphitheatre to set up a food court so income could be generated and the same We Beat may have benefitted. Those businessmen are the ones who should support the event now,” Lee Sing said.